“Aw, go ahead,” Carson said, then lowered her eyes with a laugh of embarrassment. At the moment, she wasn’t joking. She’d worry about her soul later. Right now she was broke and needed a ride.
Mamaw patted Carson’s cheek in a gesture of summation, drew back, and picked up and sorted her cards with quick, snapping sounds. “That golf cart has a nice roof on top. It’s absolutely precious. Go on out now and give it a look-see.”
Carson’s sigh was mingled with a moan as she rose to go. She was arrested by Lucille’s hand on her arm. Carson wanted to jerk her arm away, she was so annoyed with both of the women. She glanced down into Lucille’s dark eyes, not sure if the woman was being kind or was about to deliver another zinger.
Lucille patted her arm with compassion. “I know this might seem like a strikeout now,” Lucille told her. “But, darlin’, you just scored a home run.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The following few days there was a flurry of activity at Sea Breeze. Harper waited until her mother left for the Hamptons, then she flew to New York to pack up clothes and conclude her affairs with human resources at the publishing house. Harper didn’t think she would be gone for more than two weeks, and Carson believed her. Meanwhile, Dora drove home alone to Summerville to see to the many details of preparing the house for sale and to face the odious task of meeting with lawyers for her divorce. Despite her reservations, she’d agreed to let the women at Sea Breeze care for Nate until she returned.
The house seemed quiet with her sisters gone. Carson loved them, of course, but they were as yet hardly close. She lay on the iron bed, her arms folded under her head, and her thoughts turned back to those summers the girls had shared at Sea Breeze. Back when Mamaw had called them her Summer Girls.
The many summers had been a hodgepodge of visits that continued from the time each of them was very young until they’d become teens. Initially, only she and Dora had spent summers together. Carson had lived with Mamaw in Charleston, and Dora, three years older than Carson, was invited to spend the summers with them from her home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Those early years were the best for the two eldest girls, long lazy summers of playing mermaids and painting on the veranda with Mamaw. Later, those years’ difference signified a lifetime when Carson was ten and Dora was thirteen. Then, Dora found her half sister annoying; she invited friends to Sea Breeze and Carson was excluded from their games.
It was a turnaround when Harper began coming to Sea Breeze at six years of age. She was so small and delicate, dressed like one of the Madame Alexander dolls she coveted.
The girls had spent only three full summers together, during which time there was an eight-year spread between Dora and Harper. Carson had been the link between the eldest and the youngest, the go-between, the popular one, the peacemaker. After Dora turned seventeen she stopped spending her summers at Sea Breeze. Carson and Harper spent another two summers together alone, which forged their bond. Where Dora loved playing dress-up and feminine make-believe games, Carson and Harper let loose their inner Huck Finns. They’d explored every inch of Sullivan’s Island and Isle of Palms, searching for the pirate treasure every child on the island knew was buried somewhere.
Like the Lost Boys, however, eventually they grew up. When Carson turned seventeen she got a summer job in Los Angeles and Harper’s mother purchased a house in the Hamptons. This marked the end of the Summer Girls at Sea Breeze.
A few years later, the girls came together again when Dora married Calhoun Tupper in a grand Charleston event. On the heels of the wedding came two funerals. Their father died young, at forty-seven, and soon after, their grandfather Edward Muir passed away. His funeral in 2000 was the last time all three girls were together. Now, all these years later, Carson wondered if Mamaw’s dream of reuniting her Summer Girls was just a romantic notion.
Carson’s gaze shifted to the elaborate portrait of an early Muir ancestor that hung on the opposite wall. Her great-great-great-great-grandmother Claire Muir wore an elaborate navy velvet dress trimmed with thick layers of white lace of the quality Carson saw in history books of queens and great ladies. Her thick, raven hair was swept up and adorned with rows of pearls. More pearls, long, incandescent strands of them, fell down past her generous breasts. When Carson stared at the face, the woman’s brilliant blue eyes seemed to be staring right back at her.
It had always felt like this, ever since Mamaw had moved the portrait from the main house in Charleston to Carson’s room. Carson looked into the eyes of the great lady in the portrait, remembering that day.
Carson had been in that awkward transition period between childhood and adolescence and fully aware of the awkwardness of her tall, gangly body, her big feet, and her dark, thick hair. Not at all like her sister, Dora, with her soft golden hair and fair skin and breasts beginning to bud from her slender body.
Mamaw had knocked softly on her bedroom door and, hearing her crying, stepped inside the room. Carson had tried to control her sobs, but couldn’t.
“Whatever is the matter?”
“I’m so ugly!” Carson had cried, and began another crying jag.
Mamaw came to sit on the bed beside Carson. “Who says you’re ugly, child?”
“Tommy Bremmer,” she mumbled, and buried her face in her arms. “He said my hair was a rat’s nest.”
Her grandmother sniffed imperiously and said, “Well, if he’s a Bremmer, then he ought to know a rat when he sees one. But he doesn’t know one thing about girls. Neither did his grandfather. Now, stop sniveling, child. It doesn’t suit you.”
While Carson tried to settle her sobs, Mamaw went into the bathroom and returned with a damp washcloth. Carson closed her eyes and relished the feel of the coolness as Mamaw gently wiped the hot tears and snot from her face. When she opened them again she could breathe easier because her chest wasn’t so filled with hate.
“Muirs never cower,” Mamaw told her, sitting beside her on the mattress. She began tugging a comb through Carson’s long, knotted hair. “You’re becoming a young lady, you know.”
“Ow, stop,” Carson whined, wiggling away from the comb.
Mamaw persisted. “Beauty is our duty and sometimes it hurts. We must be stoic. Now, let me have a hand at this magnificent head of hair you have.”
Carson closed her eyes while her grandmother combed her hair. After the first painful detangling of knots, her grandmother was able to run the comb smoothly all the way from her scalp past her shoulders.